Earth to Philly

The outbreak of swine flu in Mexico and now the U.S. has inspired some hysteria as well as some scoffing by anti-alarmists who remember Gerald Ford's over-the-top response to swine flu in the 1970s. Right now, with 149 deaths in Mexico, 40 cases confirmed here, and more showing up around the globe, it's still not clear whether the "potential pandemic" cited by the World Health Organization is something we really need to start worrying about, or whether this situation will wind up relatively small-scale.

One of the key talking points on which some people still seem to be unclear is that you don't get swine flu by eating pork. This is literally true - the disease is being spread worldwide by human-to-human contact - but the scourge of swine flu may be caused, if indirectly, by the eating of pork.

Smithfield says it has not found any swine flu on its premises, but the state legislature of Veracruz has demanded that Granjas Carroll turn over "all documents and environmental certifications on its three massive waste lagoons" as part of its investigation into the cause of the outbreak.

The exact cause of this outbreak and its eventual impact on human health are still up in the air as of this writing. What we do know is that the continued funding of factory farms (by way of meat purchases) keeps the probability high of a future outbreak of disease spread by food animals in close confinement.

UPDATE 4/28: Here are a couple of high-profile takes on the meat industry connection from CNN Headline News (in which the anchor expresses incredulity that the mainstream media is ignoring this angle) and Britain's The Guardian.